Another day of work and domesticity. But instead of speaking about that special frisson I get running in and out of Robert’s (pronounced RO-bears–tell ’em, Jay) in under 30 minutes with a two-week supply of groceries in my basket, I think I’ll post something else…
About two years after leaving Millsaps, I experienced a nagging concern: I’d had so many good times in college, what if I forgot them all? So for x-mas that year, I bought each of my college chums a pen and a fancy notebook and asked them to write down their favorite Millsaps stories. Of course, in the end no one bothered to send me a damn thing, and I had to rely solely on my own foggy recollections.
[I try to reconcile this urge to remember with my equally strong resentment of nostalgia, and all I can come up with is that writing something down isn’t quite the same as reliving it. Like, when the written word became a widespread phenomenon several centuries BC, Greek philosphers lamented the death of memory, their logic being that once a story is written down, there’s no reason to remember it anymore. Translation: with my past written down, I can leave it there, not get bogged down in it. I think. Or maybe I’m just full of it.]
Gradually I pieced together a sort of history, fraught with drugs and sexcapades and hooliganism. I hope soon to surprise my buddies with a nice, clean hard copy of it all. (If any of you are reading this–and I don’t think you are–stop now.)
So, this is one of the silliest pieces from that work, but I kinda like it because I was reading Gertrude and Alice at the time I wrote it and I felt like I was channelling that deco-lesbo-lit vibe. Anyway, enjoy. Don’t worry: it’s short.
Ann Is Not a Vet
(after Ms. Stein)
I had a tarantula. It’s name was Arachne. “How original,” you say. It died. I put it inside the refrigerator. Later I took it back. I wanted my money back. They would not give me my money back, they would only give me more doomed pets. I chose guinea pigs.
I had to leave. My roommate Frank had to leave. We both had to leave to go other places. Ann was not my roommate. She did not have to leave. Ann would stay in Jackson. Ann said she would come by my apartment to look after my pet guinea pigs. I forget what their names were, the guinea pigs.
I came back from where I had been and my pets were in the refrigerator again. They were wrapped in foil. Ann was not to be seen. I called Ann at her apartment. “Ann, my pets are in the refrigerator,” I said. She said, “I know.” “Why are my guinea pigs in the refrigerator?” I said. She said, “Because they are dead.” I had assumed that. I assumed I would not get another refund on pets. The shopgirl would think I was an abusive parent and would give me no more animals.
“How did they die?” “Well, you see, I got here one day and one of them was dead and the other one didn’t look too good so I called the vet and he said that it was probably just constipated and that I should give it some roughage, lettuce or something, so I do and then it has diarrhea, and so I call the vet again and he says that a little Pepto Bismol should fix things, so I go out and I buy a bottle of Pepto and I feed it to the hamster—”
“Guinea pig.”
“Whatever, and I feed it, and it must have been too late because it died. Sorry.”
I doubted that. I doubted that a doctor had said to feed a guinea pig Pepto Bismol. I made her take me to dinner. And I kept the bottle of Pepto until it was empty. Ann is not a vet.
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